Thoughts and reflections from a progressive, gay, Catholic perspective.

Sunday, May 31, 2015

Buffy Sainte-Marie's Power in the Blood

.

Iconic singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie and her new album Power in the Blood have been getting a lot of good press in the past two weeks. Reviews for the album have been overwhelmingly positive and a range of media outlets, from Democracy Now! to Vogue, have highlighted the multi-talented Buffy, her 50+ year career, and her new album.

You may recall that in the lead-up to the May 12 release of Power in the Blood I did a special series of posts focusing on Buffy, her music and her social activism. In Part 1 of this series I talk a bit about my own interest in, and appreciation for, Buffy and her music. I also share some concert photos of her that I took in 1999. (This series begins here and continues here and here.)

This evening I share an excerpt from the official media release for Power in the Blood followed by highlights from a number of reviews, an insightful 10-minute video on the making of the album, and a compilation of links to several recent interviews and articles. Enjoy!

Buffy Sainte-Marie’s bold new album, Power in the Blood, begins where it all started more than 50 years ago, with a contemporary version of “It’s My Way,” the title track of her 1964 debut [right]. Its message, about the road to self-identity and the conviction to be oneself, still resonates with the Cree singer-songwriter, activist, educator, visual artist, and winner of countless awards (Oscar, Juno, and Golden Globe, among them).

One of her earliest classics, “Cod’ine,” a harrowing account of addiction well ahead of its time, was covered by everyone from Janis Joplin to Donovan to Courtney Love. Or maybe you remember Sainte-Marie from her five years on the television show Sesame Street beginning in the mid-’70s.

Whatever the case, every song and every era has revealed new and distinctive shades of an artist revered for her pioneering and chameleon ways. There was no mold from which Buffy Sainte-Marie emerged; she created her own, ripened from experiences in both her head and her heart.

Power in the Blood is a follow-up to 2008’s acclaimed Running for the Drum [left] and only her fourth studio release in more than twenty years. Although just because you don’t hear from her for long stretches doesn’t mean she's not playing. Quite the opposite. Sainte-Marie’s creativity is always in motion, and her passport's always in hand, touring for lectures and performances around the world with her high-octane backing band. She records only when she feels like touring, and currently Sainte-Marie is taking center stage around the world, including North America, Europe and Australia.

Her latest record is an honest reflection of Sainte-Marie. The hallmarks of her catalog – the eclecticism and compassion she brings to each album, oblivious to genre boundaries and production trends – are in glorious bloom here. It’s the Buffy you know and love, and it’s geared for contemporary audiences.

At 74, singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie has come up with an album to compare with her best. From her earliest acoustic folk days, the Canadian Cree has combined sinuous songcraft with a powerful spiritual and political conviction lent flavour by incorporating elements of American Indian traditional music. Her rare latter-day recordings have added muscular rock power, atmospheric keyboard textures and electro grooves to a dynamic mix, exhibiting a stirring, chanting momentum focused on her extraordinary vibrato voice.

[Power in the Blood] is her 14th album, yet only her third original studio set in nearly 40 years. She may not be prodigious but she makes every track count, with a sense of both urgency and stoicism in songs addressing damage done to her heritage and the environment by the powers she has always pitched herself against. Of the twelve tracks, two are striking reinventions of older songs (pugnacious 1964 anthem "It’s My Way" and furious 1972 break-up rocker "Not the Lovin' Kind") and two are uplifting covers of British bands (Alabama 3’s "Power In the Blood" and UB40’s "Sing Our Own Song"). With dreamy lullabies, hypnotic love songs and pointed politics all delivered with emotional stridency, Saint-Marie blends rich musicality with the force of righteous conviction.

Apparently nobody told Buffy Sainte-Marie to slow down when she hit her eighth decade on this earth. But, even if they did, who'd expect her to listen? At 74 years old, this perennially underrated artist sounds as vital and as urgent as ever on this, her 18th record. In fact, Power In The Blood might just be the best album she's made since the late 1960s. Recording in Toronto with producers Michael Phillip Wojewoda (Rheostatics), Jon Levine (K'NAAN) and Chris Birkett (Sinéad O'Connor), the Canadian-born Cree singer-songwriter and activist has found just the right sonic home for her singular voice.

. . . Truly there is no song I've heard this year that's affected me (on the first and on the 31st listen) as deeply as "Ke Sakihitin Awasis"; by turns a slow-burning love song, a lament for something lost and a dream of renewal and rebirth, this magisterial lullaby alone is enough to justify recording everything else that surrounds it. Power In The Blood is a masterpiece in a storied career.

[Buffy's] first [album] since 2008’s Running for the Drum is a hard-hitting, musically diverse collection, touching on themes of militarization and corporate greed as well as love, family and protecting Mother Earth. Powwow singing and electronic rhythms give it a contemporary flavour and a strong sense of urgency.

I listened loud to [Buffy Sainte-Marie's] music through college and into adulthood and was inspired by her fierceness and activism. From her unique voice — that is part trill and part songbird — to her instruments of mouth bow and drum, to her lyrics of protest, perseverance and hybrid-music mixes, she always brings her all.

Indeed, since hitting the folk music scene in the 1960s, Buffy Sainte-Marie has been a hero for many. She is a musical innovator — producing her own music and adopting electronic instruments before anyone else.

She still travels with a rock band all over the world. She's also a front line educator creating the Cradleboard Teaching Project that brings Native American cultures into public education systems. She has been an activist from AIM to Idle No More, an actor and a successful artist.

At 74, Buffy's fire is still burning bright with a new album, Power in the Blood, that once again challenges what you think you know about her, about music and about indigenous peoples.

[Buffy Sainte-Marie] is well-known and rightly honored for her civil rights activism and music, but the 74-year-old Cree singer-songwriter is no throwback to yesteryear. As fans know, the artist’s catalog is an embarrassment of riches, with styles ranging from acoustic to traditional American Indian songs to classic folk to true rockers.

Her latest batch of songs is a delicious mix of styles.

Standout tracks include Miss Sainte-Marie’s reinvention of the 1964 tunes “It’s My Way,” which mixes electronic with soul-stirring percussion reminiscent of American Indian drum lines and folk lyrics, the electronica-Americana “Farm in the Middle of Nowhere” and the rock-folk-Americana-Native mix that is “Generation.”

Expect critics to name Power in the Blood, released last week, as one of the best albums of the year.

Buffy Sainte-Marie’s genre-detonating early-1970s recordings, which found a happy medium between indigenous, country, electro-acoustic, and folk, have been rediscovered by indie stalwarts like Owen Pallett. In the age of Idle No More, her politics have seemed prophetic. After working for years on a variety of projects less related to music, she returns with an uncategorizable collection of profound resonance. Power in the Blood is the work of an elder working against genre, knowing history, and moving forward into aesthetically unknown territory. For a septuagenarian, the optimism of it is heartening.

Few Canadian artists have had as fascinating and varied a career as Buffy Sainte-Marie. [Her latest album is] a totally compelling and powerful new collection of songs. . . . Buffy [is] singing and writing as strongly as ever, and framing her songs in contemporary settings. Helping her do that are such ace producers as long-time collaborator Chris Birkett (Sinead O'Connor), Jon Levine (Serena Ryder), and Michael Phillip Wojewoda (Rheostatics). Earlier songs "It's My Way" and "Not the Lovin' Kind" are reworked effectively, while "We Are Circling" first appeared on Internal Sounds, a 2013 album from The Sadies. At a time when contemporary folk artists seem scared to write protest songs, it's refreshing to hear her sound eloquently angry still, as on the title cut.

. . .A charismatic performer, she is touring North America this summer. Canadian festival shows include the Calgary Folk Festival (July 25), Interstellar Rodeo in Edmonton (July 26), and Manitoulin Country Fest on August 7. Check her site for more shows.

[Power in the Blood] is one of the most diverse albums out there. I am awestruck by the songwriting of this extremely underrated singer/songwriter [and] extremely impressed with the melting pot of music that blends in with [Buffy's] lyrics and messages perfectly. Her voice . . . is still full of power even 50 years [into her career]. She is well, well overdue for some mainstream success.

It’s easy to lump folk icon Buffy Sainte-Marie in with Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and other activist voices of a generation, but that would be a major disservice to Miss Sainte-Marie.

Her work is at least as influential with fans and with artists as diverse as Kanye West and Samantha Crain. Yet Miss Sainte-Marie has always remained a moving musical target, mixing and matching styles including folk, rock, industrial, electronic, hip-hop and, of course, American Indian. The common denominators in her rich catalog of work are her distinctive vocals wrapped around songs that throb with individual and communal respect. Those themes are resplendent in her dazzling new album, Power in the Blood.

“If I’m thinking professionally, I am a songwriter,” Miss Sainte-Marie said when asked whether she defines herself as a songwriter, singer, activist, actor, composer, educator or philanthropist, or by one of the many other roles that have defined her life’s work. “When I started singing, I had already been making up songs for years. It’s just what I did for fun [starting when I was] three. Other kids would like to go out and play ball or paint or dance, but I wanted to create songs.”

And what a selection she has crafted on this lush album, which brims with more modern and visionary sounds that put listeners in mind of artists such as Nine Inch Nails and Neil Young.

. . . Those who try to pigeonhole Miss Sainte-Marie and her music don’t understand how her artistry works. That’s one reason the swirl of electronic, rock, folk, country, hip-hop and Native sounds in Power in the Blood will surprise many.

But for all the bold synthesizers and samples, Miss Sainte-Marie’s music is still steeped in her rich folk tradition, particularly on the country-based “Farm in the Middle of Nowhere” and “The Uranium War,” which continues her lament about Native issues.

The stand-out moment for me comes in the album’s opening third with “We Are Circling,” a rhythmic, rocking anthem celebrating every Earthly thing from “creature to creation,” first recorded with The Sadies for their 2013 Internal Sounds. According to Sainte-Marie, the song originates with the Rainbow Family in Northern California, when it had just one verse, but she’s written more, spreading its message in ever-widening circles with each verse, her trademark vibrato punctuating the lines “This is harmony / This is community / This is celebration / This is sacred.” It is the album’s spiritual heart, its pulse, its power, its blood.

Fearless and forthright as ever, Sainte-Marie takes on politics and social justice causes with aplomb. A cover of UB40’s anti-apartheid anthem “Sing Our Own Song” recontextualizes the song and adds new lyrics referencing Idle No More; “Ke Sakihitin Awasis” is dedicated to all generations of indigenous people of North America, those who keep the culture alive and not let the struggle and oppression be easily forgotten.

With the vigor and gusto of someone half her age, Sainte-Marie rallies a new generation on Power In The Blood’s closing song, “Carry It On” to keep the legacy she has established alive: “Look right now / and you will see / we are only here by the skin of our teeth / as it is, so take heart / and take care of your link with life / and carry it on.”

Following is a 10-minute documentary by Folk Roots and Blues Music on the making of Power in the Blood. It features interviews with Buffy and the album's three producers – Jon Levine, Chris Birkett and Michael Wojewoda. Enjoy!

I established The Wild Reed in 2006 as a sign of solidarity with all who are dedicated to living lives of integrity – though, in particular, with gay people seeking to be true to both the gift of their sexuality and their Catholic faith. The Wild Reed simply invites people to observe and reflect upon one man’s progressive, gay, Catholic perspective on faith, sexuality, politics, and culture.

Search This Blog

Translate

On September 24, 2012,Michael BaylyofCatholics for Marriage Equality MNwas interviewed by Suzanne Linton of Our World Today about same-sex relationships and why Catholics can vote 'no' on the proposed Minnesota anti-marriage equality amendment.

Even though reeds can symbolize frailty, they may also represent the strength found in flexibility. Popular wisdom says that the green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm. Tall green reeds
are associated with water, fertility, abundance, wealth, and rebirth. The sound of a reed pipe
is often considered the voice of a soul
pining for God or a lost love.

Readers write . . .

"I believe your blog to be of utmost importance for all people regardless of their orientation. . . . Thank you for your blog and the care and dedication that you give in bringing the TRUTH to everyone."– William

"Michael, if there is ever a moment in your day or in your life when you feel low and despondent and wonder whether what you are doing is anything worthwhile, think of this: thanks to your writing on the internet, a young man miles away is now willing to embrace life completely and use his talents and passions unashamedly to celebrate God and his creation. Any success I face in the future and any lives I touch would have been made possible thanks to you and your honesty and wisdom."– AB

"Since I discovered your blog I have felt so much more encouraged and inspired knowing that I'm not the only gay guy in the Catholic Church trying to balance my Faith and my sexuality. Continue being a beacon of hope and a guide to the future within our Church!"– Phillip

"Your posts about Catholic issues are always informative and well researched, and I especially appreciate your photography and the personal posts about your own experience. I'm very glad I found your blog and that I've had the chance to get to know you."– Crystal

"Thank you for taking the time to create this fantastic blog. It is so inspiring!"– George

"I cannot claim to be an expert on Catholic blogs, but from what I've seen, The Wild Reed ranks among the very best."– Kevin

"Reading your blog leaves me with the consolation of knowing that the words Catholic, gay and progressive are not mutually exclusive.."– Patrick

"I grieve for the Roman institution’s betrayal of God’s invitation to change. I fear that somewhere in the midst of this denial is a great sin that rests on the shoulders of those who lead and those who passively follow. But knowing that there are voices, voices of the prophets out there gives me hope. Please keep up the good work."– Peter